


And The Morning Sun Was Glancing In

by Katherine



Category: Black Beauty - Anna Sewell
Genre: Canon Divergent, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28024611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/pseuds/Katherine
Summary: After being sold on from the Earl's, all through his time as a job-horse, Black Beauty had missed Ginger. The two of them had whispered of Birtwick Park, and steadied each other in the new work.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Books of Yule





	And The Morning Sun Was Glancing In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SplatterOfPaint](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplatterOfPaint/gifts).



After being sold on from the Earl's, all through his time as a job-horse, Black Beauty had missed Ginger. The two of them had whispered of Birtwick Park, and steadied each other in the new work. Her presence in the carriage-traces beside him, fidgety yet familiar, had helped him bear the change, and even the strain of the shortened bearing rein.

Black Beauty had found it a comfort, there at the Earl's, to stand in his stall next to Ginger's and talk with her quietly of their former home. It was Ginger, after the peaceful years at Birtwick Park, who said they were rather well treated at this new place, other than the matter of the bearing-rein. When her fit of kicking resulted only in her being changed from working as a carriage horse to a hunter, she had not minded much at first. But she had found it to be a difficult thing, ridden too with little care by a rider whose ways were unsettled.

She had her place near him in the stables, and at the last the interlude at grass before Black Beauty was sold. With that parting lying years behind him, and a routine as a cab horse, well enough looked after, Black Beauty remembered Ginger with less immediacy yet with more wistfulness. Then came the horror of seeing her at the cab-rank, so thin, near to being used up, and worse than the bodily hurts to know her despairing...

The touch of hands did not soothe Black Beauty's grief in that knowledge of Ginger's fate, nor did Captain's story-telling. Even the Sundays, restful, were less of peace to Black Beauty for a time than they were blank days without the distraction of busy London streets and Jerry's guidance. But, as horses must, he gradually felt the restless resentment ebb, and told himself he had a fine companion in Captain. It was no fault of the Captain's that he was not as deeply a friend as Ginger had been.

The accident, Captain's hurt, and then the empty stall after a merciful end that Black Beauty did not witness. Black Beauty's spirits were lowered again. Jerry and his family came in turn to pat Black Beauty as he stood in the stable, alone, but the gentle words and touches were across the divide between horse and man.

*

Black Beauty heard only some parts of the story as Jerry told the children it over, for all of the family were in and out of the stable, then bustling around the stable-yard while getting the cab readied. "Word that I'd been looking about for a horse to replace dear Captain," he heard. Then, later, something about it not being the usual way to buy from one of the masters that rents out the use of a cab and horses to drivers. "For they are often sorely used," Jerry explained, "the horses and the men both, and it is a hard life to not be one's own master."

"Good breeding, and a look in the eye that spoke of not being used up yet," was the last piece of it that Black Beauty caught. From then he had to be patient, wondering what new horse would be brought in the place of the old Captain who had been a soldier's horse, and had died after years in harness as a cab-horse due only to a drunken cart-driver's folly.

He heard the horse being led in, first, a slow step, the sound of it that of a horse light in frame yet low in spirits. There was a clinking noise that told of ill-fitted shoes; Jerry would soon get that bettered by the farrier. He was a man who kept his horses as well as he could, and at times better, Black Beauty knew. The Captain had told him once of their master seeing about a horse's blanket proofed against rain before a new coat for himself.

On that thought, that he could honestly tell the new horse their master was a fine one, and while London life had long hours and no grass it was well enough, Black Beauty neighed a friendly greeting.

The call that came back was hesitant, quieter, yet had a familiar note to it. Jerry led the new horse right into Black Beauty's sight, and Black Beauty's neigh ebbed to silence at the shock of recognition. The new horse was a thin chestnut, finely-built as a hunter. A mare with a narrow streak of white on her face. Ginger.

*

Ginger spoke only glancingly of her life between that parting and this reunion, but she did not at least, as she had said when they were chance-met at the cab stand, wish aloud for death. Black Beauty could tell that she would make up her own mind regarding how the work would be here. But in the slight shiftings she made in the deep straw, he sensed her considering that the very stable promised better days.

Their time overlapped at midday in that stable-yard each of the six days of work, Ginger unhitched from the cab from the morning and Black Beauty put into the traces for the afternoon and evening. The night in the stables, also, although often Black Beauty was brought in late, his legs stiff from waiting or from long trips on the hard London roads. But as he was rubbed down and given his feed, he would hear Ginger's soft greeting.

She did not yet trust her new place, but would whisper, voice softer than the restless stamp of her hooves on the stable floor, that she was glad to see Black Beauty again.

*

Black Beauty shared, vaguely, Jerry's satisfaction in the gentlemen party-goers having come out to the waiting cab when they had asked for it. Jerry had whistled on the last turn before home, his breathing easy, without the cough of former winters.

"Not so late as might have been," Black Beauty said philosophically to Ginger, as he joined her.

Ginger snorted and tossed up her head, the white streak showing dimly in the night-dark stable. She had less faith in a good master than did Black Beauty, although she had already come to make acknowledgment that Jerry was one; and she had also a deeper despair in the bad, although she had sunk to harder times than Black Beauty, pulling one of Skinner's cabs.

Black Beauty had watched Ginger in so many changing moods, from suspicion when at very first they met at Birtwick Park, gradually softening to a still-wary gentleness under the care of the good people there. He had known her to be a hard worker, always, pulling strongly in harness and matching her steps to his. They had been closer companions yet at the Earl's, separated from those with whom they had shared Birtwick Park, the other horses and bright-natured Merrylegs.

They had hard, honest work as Jerry's cab horses, Ginger still less expecting of kindness than was Black Beauty. That was to be understood, after the pain and despair that Ginger had already endured. But as she had at Birtwick Park, she gentled under consistent good handling. Her breath dragged in sharp, now and again, but Ginger was far from used up. Gradually a light returned to her eyes, and even a proud curve to her neck.

*

Ginger had called Black Beauty a colt, those first moments Black Beauty had in the loose-box at Birtwick Park. He had resented that at the time, considering himself full grown. But he knew, these days with darker years behind, how young he had still been then.

Though they most often recalled the years at Birtwick Park, there also had been the weeks in the meadow at the Earl's, both of them newly ruined, Black Beauty's knees and Ginger's wind and over-strained back. They had taken joy in each other's company, then. How much more so they did now, Black Beauty steady in the routine and Ginger warily adjusting to it.

No loose-box for either of them, but Jerry did not tie them. Also, once he noted how well his two horses got along together (for of course they could not tell him that they were friends since before he bought Ginger) he arranged the stable so they could reach each other when they wished.

Tonight, Black Beauty groomed Ginger with a gentle thoroughness, his muzzle at Ginger's neck, along her withers, down the line of her shoulders, near side first then off side. He and Ginger were companions and would not imagine being parted again.

No orchards or sunlight dappled by leaves, but although their London life was greyer in surroundings, it was a life shared. In the winter-quiet, the six days of their work as cab horses done and the promise of a day of rest to come, Black Beauty and Ginger stood in their stable, at peace.


End file.
